Dr Tom Rice

Senior Lecturer in Film Studies

With a focus on film history, my research examines the relationship between political and cultural movements and cinema. My initial research centred on early American cinema, looking at the connection between cinema and conservative forces in the US in the 1920s. These ideas are explored in my book, White Robes, Silver Screens: Movies and the Making of the Ku Klux Klan(Indiana University Press, 2015) which examines the role of cinema in the formation, development and demise of the Ku Klux Klan between 1915 and 1944. Through a range of sources – including Klan newspapers, censorship files, and personal papers – the book explores the ways in which the Klan used, produced and protested against film in order to recruit members, generate publicity and define itself as a traditional, Protestant American organisation. The book has been widely reviewed and was runner-up for the BAFTSS Best Book award in 2017 and also received an Honorable Mention at the 2016 INDIEFAB awards. I have spoken on aspects of this work for TV and written articles based on this research for publications including The Guardian and The Conversation.

I have also worked extensively on British colonial, world and transnational cinemas, serving as the senior postdoctoral researcher on a major 3 year AHRC funded project, entitled Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire (2007-2010). I have written historical essays on more than 200 films and production companies, which can be found at www.colonialfilm.org.uk. These essays cover a broad range of geographical areas, periods and genres including, for example, British sponsored documentaries, war propaganda, amateur films, African health films, Indian newsreels, and early travelogues. I have spoken on aspects of this research in America, Europe, India and Hong Kong, and have helped organise film seasons, conferences and educational programmes utilising the colonial film materials. I have a number of publications in related areas, from early educational film in Britain to mobile film exhibition in Africa. My forthcoming book, Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Empire, explores the establishment and growth of the Colonial Film Units (in England, Africa and the Caribbean) from the 1920s to the 1960s. In 2016/17 I received a Leverhulme Fellowship, which allowed me to undertake research for this book in Ghana and Jamaica.

I have served a wide range of administrative roles at St Andrews, most recently as Director of Teaching and Exams Officer for Film Studies and have worked closely with staff and students in developing all aspects of our teaching programme at St Andrews.

I am also Director of Cinema St Andrews, an archival research project established in 2011. For more information go to http://cinemastandrews.org.uk.

Publications

BOOKS

Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Empire (forthcoming in 2019, under contract with University of California Press).

‘Working through the end of Empire’, Films that Work: The Circulations of Industrial Film, Frankfurt, 15-18 December 2015.

'Children of the Empire', Children and Non-Theatrical Media Conference, University of Glasgow, April 2014.

'The Moving Image: Digitising the Colonial Film Archive', Many Lives of Indian Cinema, 1913-2013 and Beyond, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, 9-11 January 2014.

'Travelling Producer: William Sellers and the Movement of Colonial Film', Connected Histories of Empire, University of Bristol, July 2013.

'Are you Proud to be British: Mobile Film Shows, Local Voices and the Demise of the British Empire', Screen Studies Conference, University of Glasgow, July 2012.

'Voices of Malaya at the End of Empire', Documentary Film/Hong Kong/ Grierson, Hong Kong Baptist University, January 2012.

'Watching Audiences: The Colonial Film Unit and the (mobile) Exhibition of Empire, Film Cultures: Historical Perspectives, EFL University, Hyderabad, October 2011.

'Africans in England: The Colonial Film Unit and the Beginning of the End', Film and the End of Empire, University of Pittsburgh, September 2010.

Research supervision

I would welcome approaches from research students working on projects related to aspects of film history, colonial cinema, British documentary, early American cinema, world cinemas (especially pre-1960), non-theatrical film practices, and educational and government film. I would be particularly interested in supervising projects that engage with primary research materials or that work with film archives.